


The Five Times Dani Wanted to Kiss Jamie. And the One Time She Actually Did.

by artificialashley



Category: The Haunting of Bly Manor (TV)
Genre: 5+1 Things, A little fluffy a little angsty, Basically Dani's narrative for all of the key Damie scenes Bly has to offer before the big kiss, Canon Compliant, F/F, Just me gripping on to every bit of screentime they got
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-06
Updated: 2020-11-06
Packaged: 2021-03-09 06:00:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27409981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/artificialashley/pseuds/artificialashley
Summary: A peek inside Dani's thoughts every time she found herself alone with Jamie, her body wanting nothing more than to pull the other girl in close and kiss her but her brain stopping her every time. Until, of course, the one night that she decided to do it anyway.
Relationships: Dani Clayton/Jamie
Comments: 6
Kudos: 166





	The Five Times Dani Wanted to Kiss Jamie. And the One Time She Actually Did.

It seemed excessive really, to say that the first time the thought of kissing Jamie had crossed Dani’s mind was the very first time that they met.

‘I’ve wanted to kiss you since the moment I laid eyes on you’ is a strange line, one that people pull out to woo, to impress, to validate. A people-pleaser that hardly ever reigned true. But it did for Dani, for the first thought that crossed her mind the second Jamie walked into the kitchen was of her lips (more specifically, of how they’d feel against her own). 

It was strange to think she’d felt it so fast. Before that moment in the kitchen, Dani assumed she was more of a grower, someone who waded into the water slowly and let the feeling of love seep up her body one inch at a time. After all, it had taken her ten years to fall in love with Eddie and another few more to fall further out of it. The world had offered her time and she had always accepted it. Until, of course, the day she decided to punch the clock and hold back the sun because she realised that it would have taken all the time in the world to love him the way he loved her, the way she was supposed to. 

But she wasn't thinking of that day when she met Jamie, or of Eddie at all. Not even of the beautifully cooked meal in front of her that tasted so much nicer than some of the best home had to offer. Only of the gardener; the clomp of her boots as she walked in the room, the slant of her dungarees that showed a silver chain draped around her pale neck, the grin on her face as she washed her hands like the bubbles in the sink were telling hundreds of jokes that Dani couldn’t hear.

That was the moment she realised how wrong she was, the moment she dived headfirst into the water without even checking to see if it was clear - all of that stuff about growing out of the window, up the driveway and on a flight back to America before Jamie had even uttered a word.

And then she did. Twelve to be exact.

“Who decided it’d be a good idea to feed these wee Gremlins?”

It took Dani a moment to catch up, the thickness of her accent making her eyes widen that little bit more and her eyebrows raise just the same. Although she didn't realise it at the time, this would become something that happened a lot when Jamie spoke. However, there was only so long she could last blaming her tongue-tied, panicked replies on the accent before admitting it was instead to do with that kiss she wanted so badly.

Dani even let a laugh out as she watched the gardener play with the kids, her body relaxing for the first time since arriving at Bly in a way he couldn’t quite put her finger on. In fact, it might have been the first time since the accident. The first time full stop?

Dani realised quickly that Owen and Hannah thought she had already been introduced to the young woman, too caught up in each other to pick up on exactly how shell-shocked Dani was every time that Jamie smiled. She didn’t blame them though, for she had released a breath she hadn’t even realised she had trapped that day, a comfort washing over her as if she’d known Jamie for much more than those mere minutes.

Like she’d know her for all of her life.

***

It was hard to explain the guilt that Dani felt, how much it hurt to go from smiling and laughing with the kids to feeling like her ribcage was pushing down on her lungs and stealing her breath just like what had happened to Eddie. She tried her best to fight it, running outside and taking as many as she could but they never made it past her throat, never sinking deep enough into her body to feel just the tiniest bit okay. 

She tucked herself behind one of the bushes, her eyes laid firmly on the brick wall where there wasn’t a reflection in sight to remind her even more of the flashing lights in the lenses of Eddie’s glasses and the blood that stained her hands for days and weeks and months after that day. She didn’t know how long she stood there, or how long she would have been standing there until Jamie arrived.

“You alright?” Her voice waded through the heavy air and made it to Dani, loud enough to break her from her panic but quiet enough so not to scare her.

She felt her breathing slow, the words biting at her lips to come out but not ready just yet.

“Kids?” Dani heard the gravel crunch as the other girl stopped in her tracks and although she wasn’t looking, she could even see her. “Run you ragged.”

That was all her lips had needed, her breath hitching one more time before spurting out a “Yeah.”

She bit back the tears as she listened to Jamie speak, listened to her joke about how she preferred plants to people about how she could simply off with their heads if they looked at her funny.

Dani didn't understand how anyone or anything could look at Jamie funny. How anyone could look at her and think anything but “I want to kiss you right now”. Which was, in fact, how she was feeling at that moment. Different to the first time she’d felt it, which was with passion, sudden and urgent. This time it was with gratitude, with relief as the girl carried on her jokes and Dani managed to turn her head and look at her. She even managed a laugh.

“There we are.” She could have sworn she heard Jamie whisper after that laugh, three words that would replay in her mind when she went to sleep that night, the idea of someone wanting her to be happy, of Jamie wanting her to be happy messing up every single thing she’d believed about herself for the past year in the absolute best of ways.

There we are.

They were a we.

“You’re doing great,” Jamie told her as she wiped away at the few tears that remained, the ones that spilt out for a few extra seconds even after you’d turned the tap off.

Dani didn't believe her, thinking of all the happy, shiny people who walked the ground carefree without having to cover every mirror she passed. She was also thinking of all the better au pairs they could have hired, the ones who weren't too distracted running from ghosts to realise that they were supposed to be looking after two troubled children, rather than letting them lock her in the closet and wreak havoc across the house as she’d already accomplished.

Only as Dani had already figured out in the short time she’d known her, Jamie wasn’t an idiot. And along with her ability to pull Dani from her darkest places she also possessed an extraordinary talent of smelling her bullshit - hence why she repeated herself, saying it louder so that Dani could hear, so she’d maybe even believe it. 

“You’re doing great.”

“Thank you.” She let her eyes flicker back, watching as Jamie did the same, stolen glances that she’d started to notice the gardener take more and more, leaving burning questions trapped inside the thick of Dani’s hair that she couldn’t brush out with even the greatest of forces.

And before she knew it Jamie was gone, making Dani laugh one more time with a silly nickname that she’d grow to love more and more each day before returning to her day's work. And she laughed a little more too, the longing to kiss the other girl appearing yet again, turning the moment even more bittersweet as she realised it was the very thing that caused her trauma that just might save her from it too.

***

Next came the roses, a similar feeling to the one before, only this time it was Dani who had to calm Jamie down. And she knew she wasn't half as quick-witted as the other girl, always too nervous around her to use humour in that on-the-nose manner that Jamie had seemingly perfected. Flirting. She basically wasn’t as good as flirting.

Hence the desire to kiss her again. To press her lips against hers and tug on her sleeve until their bodies simply melted as one and the roses were nothing but an ornament to the moment. To kiss her in a way that would stop her from being angry and make her realise that there are people who are there for her when the flowers don't fall just right. That she would be there for her, even if the flowers were blooming to their best.

“They weren’t ready to be cut.” Jamie pointed to the mess around them, her anger audible in her voice. 

It was then that Dani realised that like herself, Jamie wasn’t always perfect, she too had a past, a history, a life before Bly that didn’t always leave at the cold iron gates of the entrance. 

Failing with the words and failing even harder with her actions (with  _ the  _ specific action she so badly wanted to undertake), she did the only thing she could think to do, looking the girl in the eyes to let her know that, for the most part, she understood. And for the part she didn't? Well, she’d be willing to listen.

“Look I have a way of doing things. And I don't like people messing about with my garden.”

“You’re right.” Dani kept her eye contact. She may not have had the jokes or the kisses she so badly wanted to give but what she did have was a somewhat doubtful authority over Miles, and at that moment she knew she would exercise it as much as she had to if it meant that Jamie felt better, that no one would mess about with her garden again so long as she was there at Bly. 

She thought back to her panic and decided to take one of Jamie’s scattered leaves from the ground to see if it would work the other way, repeating what she said so that Jamie knew she meant it, so she knew that she meant  _ even more _ than the words she was saying. 

“You’re right. I’ll talk to him.” 

It must have worked, Jamie nodding as the anger from before seeped out of her and buried itself in the soil. 

“Cool.” She hummed, an unspoken tension between the two that Dani still didn't fully understand, at least ten unspoken words hidden within that one ‘cool’. Maybe even a whole monologue. Though she did understand part of it, the glimmer behind Jamie’s eyes one she had seen in her own reflection for years; when she tried on what would have been her wedding dress with the tailor's hands so delicate around her waist, every time anyone spoke about her future and the image in her head was so very different. In the past, she’d always closed her eyes to try to push away and hide it.

Jamie led with hers wide open. She never tried to hide it. And it only made Dani want her, want it, want  _ them  _ even more.

“Look, can we just go back to the bit where, er, you were acting mental and I had to talk you down?”

And there she was back to normal, Dani slightly dumbfounded at their mutual ability to pull each other out of the silliest or the deepest of ruts, her body yet again relaxing to Jamie’s words like they were the lyrics to a song that she had been hearing for years, rolling around in her head in a state of tranquillity that she knew she couldn’t take for granted much longer.

***

The fourth time was the closest that Dani had been so far, the first time it had become something real that might actually happen rather than a schoolgirl image in her head that poked above the surface in the name of thanking the other girl, or of calming her down. 

The sky was dark around Bly, the air thick with a fog of grief after Owen had left. Dani was glad she wasn’t alone just yet, knowing how easily it could pull her in and swallow her.

She walked slowly with Jamie to her car, trying to savour every second that she didn't feel absolutely terrified, wishing that they could go back inside and fall into each other's bodies like they had the night before, drinking expensive wine as they told stories of love and possession. 

“I’m so glad you stayed.” The words came out of Dani’s mouth rather awkwardly, her lips tripping over them as she opened herself up even more to the gardener, the hidden roots of her feelings just poking out the top of the ground - she hoped Jamie was eagle-eyed enough to spot them as this was the furthest she’d managed so far, the closest she’d gotten to telling her what she really wanted.

“I am too.” Jamie made eye contact and Dani took the opportunity to plead, her mouth opening to speak but no words coming out.

And they stayed there for a minute more, the tension between them now thicker than the fog that Owen left. Dani thought about telling her to stay again. About telling her to stay forever. She thought about kissing her. About running her hand through her hair and whispering in her ear the secrets she had hardly even admitted to herself yet.

Looking in her eyes, she realised that Jamie knew. She must have known. She had to have known.

Jamie moved in closer, letting the vines that tangled them together pull tighter, closing the gap so that Dani could hear her breath. She didn’t even realise she had matched her own to it.

Jamie knew.

She knew.

And she wanted it too?

But Dani wasn’t quite sure enough, the fear of her past pushing her away from the one thing she needed to get over it. 

When Eddie’s spectre shone it illuminated all of the shame from inside of Dani, the regret and the guilt. It didn’t matter how badly she wanted Dani, how badly she needed her. Because Eddie would soon be there, cruel and bright to tap her in the past and push away her chance of a future. To push away her chance with Jamie as her future.

So she didn’t kiss her, instead reaching out to hold her hand, running her thumb over Dani’s skin in the most intimate way her system would allow. It didn’t last for long, their eye contact still as strong and in sync as before, even when Dani panicked and let go, pulling her ar swiftly to her side as though nothing had even happened.

Only it had. And Jamie didn’t want her to pretend, pausing just as she was about to climb in the car to turn around and shake her head at Dani, a brazen grin on her face that made Dani want to run inside and grab the Polaroid to take a picture - letting the camera see her face of hope and promise to wipe away the cold, dark picture of Peter and Rebecca that still haunted its lens. To have something to keep with her for when Jamie wasn’t around and she needed to breathe a different kind of air.

“Who the hell knew?” She eyed Dani one last time before closing the door and driving away for the night, the kiss that didn’t happen left lingering in the grounds of Bly in hope that someday soon, one of them would catch it and redo the moment in all of the potential that it truly possessed.

***

“You decent?” Dani heard her voice ring through the door. 

She wanted to respond with a resounding no, to tell Jamie that she was, in fact, the opposite of decent, the black clothes and smell of lilies in the air bringing back memories she could no longer hide with a coat over the mirror. But she knew that wasn’t the type of decent she meant, taking a moment before calling Jamie in.

Perhaps she should have taken more than just the one based on her body's reaction once she saw her; hair tied up with just a few curls managing to escape and run free, her legs poking out from the bottom of a slim fitting black dress, lips stained with dark pink but her silver chain still there to remind Dani that she was still in fact ‘Jamie the Gardener’, the girl who had managed to stomp her way into Dani’s soul and leave a footprint that no amount of terraforming could erase. 

“Oh. You look-”

“I can scrub up when I need to.” She interrupted, cutting the head of Dani’s compliment before it had the chance to fully blossom. Dani was half grateful, knowing that there were a hundred and one potential words she was about to say that probably would have made her look like a complete idiot. Not that it wasn’t already too late for that, Jamie always managing to catch Dani at her daftest of moments around Bly (something which, despite her intelligence, Dani had yet to realise was because Jamie caused the daft moments in the first place).

“That’s quite a dress.” Jamie did a once over of Dani’s appearance, perching her body on the end of the bed so they were looking directly at each other.

“It’s the only thing I have in black.” Dani let her hair fall in front of her face and didn't even bother to move it. “I hate it.”

“It does look a bit like you’re trying to scandalize the village. Can’t say I'd fault the general principle but...” Jamie raised an eyebrow in her direction, Dani noticing a slight shift in her behaviour from the moment by the car, since Jamie’s ‘Who the hell knew?’ - earlier they had tiptoed around their flirting, keeping most of it in glances and gestures but now it was out in the open, Jamie using it to keep Dani distracted from the horrible black dress and the even more horrible reason why she had it on.

And it was kind of working.

So Dani unloaded some of her troubles onto the other girl, allowing them to lift from her back one at a time till she started to stand up straighter and get a proper view of everything Jamie was doing for her, everything they could be doing together. She told her about her fear of letting Owen down, about the funeral she’d had to face in her own life not so long before. Jamie told her it wasn’t a problem, the look in her eyes reassuring Dani that she wasn’t being lied to.

“Hey, Poppins.” Jamie stood up from the seat to try and interrupt what was left of Dani’s pain, stepping close and clutching their hands together, much tighter, much more obviously than they had before. “It’s your day off. I promise. I don’t  _ need _ you to be my date to Owen’s mum's funeral.”

So Dani clasped back, letting a bittersweet smile form on her face. And once again she felt that longing to kiss her rise. It might have been the outfit, the fact she’d felt incredibly lonely since the last time they’d crossed paths or even the mention of the word date. She didn’t know which one had brought it on but it was there nonetheless, even more starving than all of the times before.

“Can you help me get this thing off?” She smoothed down the dress, desperate to peel it from her body and fill her life with pinks and purples and reds and blues and all the colours that didn’t have anything to do with death.

“Blimey.” Jamie cleared her throat but obliged still, moving to Dani’s back and placing her hands on her body ever so gently. It was at that moment when Dani realised why she was so good at looking after all the plants, it was all in the touch. In her touch.

“The zipper.” Dani laughed, glad that Jamie was now behind her and couldn’t see the blush on her cheeks.

And for a moment that’s all she felt, a small amount of embarrassment accompanied by something a little dirtier, once again letting her body relax as Jamie held her gently and pulled down the zip. She let out another breath, allowing her eyes to roam the room with desire until they landed in the wrong place.

She turned from the mirror quickly, Eddie’s gaze bright and shining in the reflection to remind her of what happened when her thoughts wandered. She wanted to pull Jamie into a hug, to nuzzle her face into her shoulder and close her eyes until he went away and she’d never ever see him again.

But she didn’t, her body flinching away as though her eyes were being burned by the sight. She wished for once that he would let her have it. Just once.

“Did I pinch ya?” Jamie spoke softly, reminding Dani that this time she wasn’t alone. This time the man in the mirror was accompanied by a girl, a girl in real life who was going to help pull her away. Who already was helping her to pull away.

“No. I’m sorry.” Dani tried her hardest to push him out of her mind, looking at Jamie once more to see if it would help.

Which, of course, it did,

“Alright. Well, I’ll be back in a few hours...and if I find out you’ve not been relaxing, there’ll be serious consequences.”

Dani smiled before she left, mumbling an ‘Okay’ that she really wanted to turn into a ‘Kiss me’. Maybe even a ‘Kiss me, please’ once Jamie had made it to the door, stopping to pause and look back at Dani one more time before she left for the funeral. A look that Dani would take a mental image of and save for the rest of her life, whether she knew it or not. Because all she knew at that moment was that she wanted gone of the ugly black dress. And she wanted Jamie to stay whilst she did so.

***

The air was cold in the greenhouse, the smell of smoke on their clothes still strong as Dani perched next to the other girl, taking the bottle from her hand without hesitation.

It was a red wine kind of night.

“I’m not gonna ask if you're alright, cause I don’t like being lied to. So what’s wrong?” Jamie broke the silence and despite keeping her eyes locked on the glass windows around her, Dani could feel the look on her face as she spoke.

“I thought I saw Peter Quint.”

“But it wasn’t?”

“No. Of course not.” Dani brushed her off, letting the words she’d had trapped between her teeth since the day of the accident finally come forward. “It’s not the first time I’ve seen things that aren’t there.”

She kept staring at the windows until they started to shatter before her, crashing down one by one as she finally told somebody about Eddie.

“So what else?” Jamie asked her and Dani knew it was time to face her. She might have run all the way to England but if there was one thing she couldn’t run away from it was time. And she owed it to Jamie. She owed  _ so  _ much to Jamie.

“I-I guess I told you about my fiance earlier. Didn't I?”

“You did. I was hoping we’d get around to that one.”

“Yeah.” Dani let a tear fall from her cheek, thinking back to the words she'd spoken to Miles about how great it was to be able to choose the people in your life. She used to wish someone had told her that when she was ten but at that moment it didn’t matter, because she’d managed to find someone to keep close that she could feel tired around, who just might have helped her burn away the shadows. “We were engaged. And he died. He died and sometimes it’s like..it’s like I see him.”

She watched as Jamie turned in, pushing their bodies closer together and laying an arm gently on Dani’s back - there to catch her if she fell too deep.

“I’ve never told anyone that.” She carried on, determined to spit out the rest of the guilt so that maybe, for just one night, she could dance without the weight of a dead man on her feet. “We were about to break up. We had-we...Broken up I guess. Right before.”

“Jesus Dani, the same day?” Jamie’s eyes grew wide as Dani nodded in response, the same brown as the earthy soils around Bly that Dani now called her home. “Is he here now?” 

Dani scanned the room, her heart shaking inside of its cage at the thought of him appearing, responding with a quick “No” once she was sure.

“Good. Cause you know I’ll sort him out for you if I have to? Oi, dead boyfriend! Give it up mate, it’s over.”

Dani felt the corners of her mouth start to turn, wanting nothing more at that moment to pull Jamie in till their lips touched, to stay like that until the sun rose and the birds started to chirp and then again till the next night. She knew that couldn’t happen really, the kids would run wild and Jamie would probably go into some form of shock if the plants missed their watering, but she longed for it nevertheless, knowing she’d have taken just a few minutes over the days she wanted. She’d have taken any time that Jamie had to give.

“Seriously Poppins.” Jamie managed to lean even closer, which Dani hadn’t thought was possible before but didn’t have enough space in her thoughts to question. “How are you still standing?”

‘Because you’ve lifted the dead man from my feet’ Dani wanted to tell her. But again, the words didn’t make it past her lips. 

“I’m crazy.” She blinked another tear away, angry at herself for the barriers she’d put in place to stop her from telling Jamie every single thought and feeling she’d had since the moment they’d met in the kitchen.

“I think you’re surprisingly sane considering.”

Dani looked into her eyes and tried so hard to say it. The kitchen, the bushes, the roses, the driveway, the dress - they had all led to this moment and Dani prayed for once that her lips would just work so that she could tell her, properly tell her.

“I know what it feels like. You feel like you can’t-” Jamie started but never got to finish. Because Dani’s body had finally done what her words couldn’t express, her hand grasping Jamie’s shoulder suddenly as their lips crashed together, moving panicked over her body starving of the touch it had been waiting so long for, wanting to feel everything in case it never happened again.

She was the perfect combination of red wine and passion.

“Are you sure?” Jamie pulled away for a moment, her hands still clamped around Dani’s face as they breathed in sync.

She looked around once more before agreeing, hearing Jamie whisper a dirty word that she would store in a cassette tape of her memory for the rest of her life.

It didn’t feel real at first. In fact, if it weren't for Jamie’s hands clasped tightly in her hair, moving down to her back to pull her in close and let their bodies melt into one, then Dani would have thought she was dreaming the whole thing. 

The kitchen.

The bushes.

The roses.

The driveway.

The dress.

If she’d known all those times that all it would have taken was the heat of the bonfire and the cool of the greenhouse then she’d have set up camp there a while earlier (she’d have woken up with the sun to wait there for Jamie if this was her reward).

So they stayed like that for a while, two seeds growing side by side, leaning on each other for support as they bloomed in the greenhouse, not a thought crossing Dani’s mind other than how beautiful the gardener was, and how incredible it felt to finally, finally kiss her.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Hope you guys enjoyed! Please make sure to leave a comment if you did because I've never written anything canon compliant before or anything for this fandom (or a 5+1) but I just couldn't get the pair out of my head. Also if anyone has any AU ideas/prompts for them please let me know! Thank you xoxo


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